his country had attained, scarcely allowing himself to hope that it can long continue of the same extent, and almost afraid to advert to anything apparently so extravagant, and merely within the limits of possibility, as the notion that it should ever become greater than it was. "When I survey," he exclaims, "every kingdom and great city of the world, and every petty port and creek of the same, and find in each of these some English prying after the trade and commerce thereof,...I am easily brought to imagine that either this great traffic of England is at its full perfection, or that it aims higher than can hitherto by my weak sight be either seen or discerned. I must confess England breeds in its own womb the principal supporters of its present splendour, and nourisheth with its own milk the commodities that give both lustre and life to the continuance of this trade, which I pray may neither ever decay, nor yet have the least diminution. But England being naturally seated in another corner of the world, and herein bending under the weight of too ponderous a burden, cannot possibly always and for ever find a vent for all those commodities that are seen to be daily imported and brought within the compass of so narrow a circuit; unless there can be by the policy and government of the state a mean found out to make this island either the common emporium and staple of all Europe, or at leastwise of all these our neighboring northern regions."[1] He then proceeds to observe that English commerce was formerly confined to the export of the staple merchandise of the country, "such as arc cloths, lead, tin, some new late draperies, and other English real and royal commodities," and to the import from foreign parts of mere supplies for ourselves; but that "the late great traffic of this island hath been such that it hath not only proved a bountiful mother to the inhabitants, but also a courteous nurse to the adjoining neighbours;" so that whatever trade they had lost we had gained, and they now obtained a large portion of what
- ↑ Map of Commerce, fol. Lon. 1638, Part ii. p. 251.
